Someone to Love (Westcott #1)(86)

They stayed two nights on the road in the very best of accommodations with the very best service. They were presented with a seeming banquet each evening, walked for a couple of miles afterward since the days of travel allowed no chance for exercise, and then went to bed, where they made love, slept deeply, and made love again in the early dawn.

Anna fell more deeply in love. But no, that was not quite accurate, since she had probably been in as deeply as it was possible to get even before they left London. On the journey she began to love him as she got to know him more—his intellect, his knowledge and opinions, his obvious love of his home, his brand of humor, his way of making love. Though there was no single way about that. Every time was different from the time before and the time after.

They were in what some people referred to as the honeymoon stage of their marriage, of course, and she had too much good sense to expect it to last indefinitely. But, forced into each other’s company as they were for the first two and a half days of their marriage, a certain ease had developed between them. They could sit in silence without embarrassment. They could doze in each other’s company. More important, something of a friendship was surely being built, and that perhaps would carry into the future so that they could be comfortable together even when the passion died—as surely it would.

An ease of manner in each other’s company and a friendship would be enough in the years ahead. And—oh, please, please—children. He had actually referred to them on the day of their wedding. And he must, of course, want sons, an heir. No, she told herself firmly when once or twice doubt teased at the edges of her mind, she had not made a poor decision. She was happy now. In the future she would be content to be content. She smiled at the thought.

“A penny for them, my duchess,” Avery said. They were somewhere south of Bristol, not far from the end of their journey. It always amused her to be called that—or aroused her if he said it in bed.

“Oh,” she said, “I was thinking that I could be contented with being contented.”

He looked pained. “You cannot, surely, be serious,” he said. “Contentment, Anna? Bah! Utter blandness. You were not made for any such thing. You must demand blissful happiness or grapple with deep misery. But never contentment. You must not sell yourself short. I will not allow it.”

“You intend to be a tyrant, then?” she asked him.

“Did you expect anything less?” he asked her. “I shall insist that you be happy, Anna, whether you wish to be or not. I will not brook disobedience.”

She laughed, and he turned his head. “That is your cue to say, Yes, Your Grace, in the meekest of accents,” he added.

“Ah,” she said, “but I never learned my part. No one gave me the script.”

“I shall teach you,” he said, turning his head away to look out at the countryside.

And he was only half joking, she thought, puzzled. Perhaps he did not understand that this was only a honeymoon period. Perhaps he thought his feelings would last. But what were his feelings? Was his passion for her only physical? Why had he married her of all women? He was thirty-one years old. He was an aristocrat, rich, powerful, influential, beautiful. Within the past ten years he might have married anyone he chose. No one, surely, would have refused him.

Why her?

But only half her attention was on the mystery that was her husband. The rest was upon the slight sickness she was feeling in her stomach. They had stopped for luncheon a short while ago. The other carriage had remained there along with their baggage and all the servants except the coachman. They would return there for the night. But soon they would come to Wensbury, where she had spent a couple of years of her infancy, where her mother was presumably buried, where her grandparents still lived at the vicarage beside the church, where her grandfather was still vicar.

Was this all a huge mistake? Since they had not wanted her, would it have been better to leave well enough alone and forget about them? But now that the blank emptiness of years had been wiped away, how could she be content not to know everything there was to know? She had to see them, even if they turned her away again. She had to see what she so dimly and inadequately remembered—the room with the window seat, the graveyard below, the lych-gate. Yes, she had had to come.

And then, long before she was prepared for it, they arrived in what looked to be a small, sleepy, picturesque village. Wensbury. There was almost no one outside—except a young boy who was bowling a hoop along the street until he spotted the carriage. He stopped then, yelled something in the direction of the thatched, whitewashed cottage beside him, and gawked at them, his mouth at half-mast, while a young woman came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron. A small dog a little farther along the street took exception to their invasion of its territory and barked ferociously, waking with a start the elderly man who had been sleeping on a bench outside his cottage, the dog at his feet, and setting him to staring after them, his hands clutched about the handle of the cane planted between his legs. Two women gossiping across a garden hedge stopped, probably midsentence, to stare in open amazement.

Anna doubted Avery had noticed any of it.

“It is a pretty church,” he said, looking across the village green. “Many country churches are. I wonder if there is a bell in that tower. I would wager there is.” Then he turned to look at her and, seeing her expression, said, “Anna, Anna, no one is going to eat you. I will not allow it.” He took her hand in a firm grasp.